Developments
The border and migration issue has become a principal Republican line of attack against near-certain Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Messaging from GOP figures, including Donald Trump, refers to the Vice President as the Biden administration’s “Border Czar,” a term that the White House never used to refer to Harris’s role as its point person for addressing root causes of migration in northern Central America.
“Joe Biden has now endorsed and fully supports his ‘Borders Czar’ Kamala Harris to be the Democrat candidate for president,” tweeted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), adding, “I think I will need to triple the border wall, razor wire barriers and National Guard on the border.” The term even appears in the title of an “emergency” resolution that the House of Representatives’ Republican leadership intends to move through the Rules Committee and onto the chamber’s floor in the next day or two.
- Saul Elbein, “Abbott Threatens to ‘Triple Razor Wire’ on Border After Harris Nod” (The Hill, July 22, 2024).
- “H. Res. 1371 – Strongly Condemning the Biden Administration and Its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, Failure to Secure the United States Border.” (Committee on Rules, U.S. House of Representatives, July 22, 2024).
CBS News, Mother Jones and other media published analyses debunking the claim that Harris was ever in a position of developing or implementing border and migration policies beyond Central America. “In reality, the only role close to that of a ‘border czar’ under the Biden administration was held for only a few months by Roberta Jacobson, a longtime diplomat who served as coordinator for the Southwest border until April 2021,” recalled Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS.
- Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “The Facts About Kamala Harris’ Role on Immigration in the Biden Administration” (CBS News, July 22, 2024).
- Isabela Dias, “The Myth of Kamala Harris as “Border Czar”” (Mother Jones, July 22, 2024).
While Harris’s “root causes” effort is unlikely to have been the main cause, migration from northern Central America has declined sharply since the beginning of the Biden administration. CBP encounters with citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped from 58,421 per month in fiscal 2021 to 38,657 per month (34 percent fewer) in fiscal 2024. All other major nationalities, except Nicaragua and Brazil, have increased during that period.
Harris’s critics note that she only visited the U.S.-Mexico border once during her term, and that she had not spoken to two of the Border Patrol chiefs who served since 2021. This would appear to confirm that she has played little role in border policy.
- Ryan Chandler, “Kamala Harris’ Record on Immigration and the Border” (Border Report, July 22, 2024).
- Ali Bradley, “Last 2 Border Patrol Chiefs Say Harris Has Not Spoken With Them” (NewsNation, July 22, 2024).
- Zach Despart, “Texas Gop Leaders Paint Harris as a Disaster on Border Security” (The Texas Tribune, July 22, 2024).
Two crime-ridden Mexican border regions saw shakeups of state policing capabilities. The eastern border state of Tamaulipas announced improvements to the “General Center for Coordination, Command, Control, Communications, Computing and Intelligence (C5)” of its troubled state police force, with new vehicles and a helicopter. The western border state of Sonora took over control of the municipal police force in the border city of San Luis Rio Colorado, near Yuma.
- “Renuevan c5 de Reynosa; “Ahora Esta al Servicio de las y los Tamaulipecos”: Americo” (Brand Studio, Proceso (Mexico), July 22, 2024).
- “Decretan Mando Unico Policial en Slrc para Responder a Grupos Delictivos” (Riodoce (Sinaloa Mexico), July 22, 2024).
Analyses and Feature Stories
Under the Biden administration’s June asylum rule, Border Patrol agents no longer ask migrants if they fear deportation to their countries. Under what is called the “shout test,” asylum seekers must voluntarily speak up and hope that the agent listens to them. The practice of asking migrants whether they feared return dated back to 1997, the Associated Press reported. Some recently deported migrants told the AP’s Elliot Spagat that agents ignored their requests to seek asylum.
- Elliot Spagat, Behind Biden’s Asylum Halt: Migrants Must Say if They Fear Deportation, Not Wait to Be Asked (Associated Press, Associated Press, Sunday, July 21, 2024).
If Donald Trump is re-elected, his pledge to carry out mass deportations would be eased by dramatic recent improvements in surveillance and artificial intelligence capabilities, warned an analysis from Context (an outlet backed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation). While removing undocumented migrants is difficult, “making people look over their shoulder—creating an atmosphere of fear, he [Trump] can do that,” said Muzaffar Chisti of the Migration Policy Institute.
- Avi Asher-Schapiro, “Trump, Armed With Tech, Could Supercharge Deportations” (Thomson Reuters Foundation, Context, July 22, 2024).
Recent polling suggests that more than 10 percent of Venezuelans may try to emigrate if authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro wins or steals this Sunday’s presidential election, noted a Los Angeles Times column from Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
- Will Freeman, “Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro Could Lose a Landslide Election. But Will It Matter?” (Council on Foreign Relations, The Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2024).
“You can have good faith disagreements about immigration and migration and especially around the border without resorting to dehumanizing the migrants themselves and without trying to say that they are all here to destroy us or that they are some sort of existential threat to the United States,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council in an interview with Documented.
- Fisayo Okare, “At the Democratic National Convention, How Will Democrats Respond to Republicans’ Inaccurate Message on Immigration?” (Documented, July 22, 2024).
“Immigrants today account for 13.8% of the U.S. population. This is a roughly threefold increase from 4.7% in 1970. However, the immigrant share of the population today remains below the record 14.8% in 1890,” noted an updated analysis from the Pew Research Center.
- Jeffrey S. Passel, Mohamad Moslimani, “Key Findings About U.S. Immigrants” (Pew Research Center, July 22, 2024).
On the Right
- Theo Wold, “The Great Immigration Experiment” (Claremont Institute, The American Conservative, July 22, 2024).